blognetnews.com
» Accounting
edited by: Tracy Coenen, Accounting Editor

Sox First

  • Bad economy, suicides and compensation

    Earlier this month, I looked at preliminary reports showing there has been an uptick in the number of suicides with the recession. Now there is further confirmation with a report from The Wall Street Journal showing that 19 of the largest states reporting a 2.3% increase in suicides. In Florida, [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: November 23, 2009, 4:56am EST

  • US to pay $500 billion to service mega debt

    Earlier this month, I did a blog entry warning of worse times ahead with the US debt hitting $12 trillion. Just how bad is it going to get? As the New York Times warns, the US is now facing waves of debt payments. Servicing that debt will exceed $700 billion [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: November 23, 2009, 1:50am EST

  • Detroit struggles to bury its dead

    While Michigan's unemployment is at 15.1%, Detroit's rate is at close to 28%, thanks to years of mismanagement by Ford, Chrysler and GM. Things are so bad in Detroit now that they can't even bury their dead. As The Times reports, the bodies have been piling up in the morgue' [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: November 21, 2009, 11:07pm EST

  • The war industry's victory: more tax to pay for Afghanistan

    More evidence of the military's growing clout with reports here and here that Us lawmakers are proposing higher taxes to pay for sending more troops to Afghanistan.Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee has proposed an "additional income tax to the upper brackets, folks earning more than $200,000'" [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: November 21, 2009, 4:36pm EST

  • KaosPilot revolution

    Earlier this year, I looked at the way business schools had contributed to the recession by producing the financial engineers, Masters of the Business Apocalypse (MBAs) who ended up destroying the markets. How refreshing then to read about the most unusual business school in the world. KaosPilots in Denmark. It's' [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: November 21, 2009, 1:13am EST

  • Hedge funds and brokers turn to poker

    Investing and poker have often been compared. But it's not surprising that financial recruiters for hedge funds and broking houses are scrutinizing professional poker to find talent and analytical tools. As Bloomberg reports, they think it's a good fit because both pursuits require a rational approach toward risk, self-control, speedy [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: November 20, 2009, 5:01pm EST

  • China with the most English speakers

    Which country will have the most English language speakers? It will be China with the Financial Times reporting that China is about to get more English-language speakers than India. Whereas an estimated 55 million speak English in India, China is increasing its English language speakers by 20 million a year.Why [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: November 20, 2009, 7:28am EST

  • One in seven US home loans at risk of foreclosures

    What chances of a US recovery? Don't hold your breath. As reported here, foreclosures will keep rising through 2010 and one in seven US home loans is now past due or in foreclosure. The quarterly delinquency measure is at its highest level since 1972.br />All up, just over 14% of' [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: November 20, 2009, 3:19am EST

  • Cyber warfare to erupt

    Banks and utilities will be on the front line when nations turn to cyber warfare, and there is evidence some of that's occurring right now, according to a new report.The report, by security vendor McAfee, says: "The critical infrastructure of nation-states—banking and finance, electrical grids, oil and gas refineries and pipelines,'" [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: November 19, 2009, 3:47am EST

  • Why it's not easy being green

    Yesterday, I did a blog entry on how policy makers were losing the battle to win public support on climate change because of what's been called Apocalypse Fatigue where people are so overloaded with warnings of terrible climate-induced disasters ahead that they just switch off. That might explain why people' [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: November 19, 2009, 3:01am EST

  • Apocalypse Fatigue: losing the battle on climate change

    Why are so many still questioning climate change when the science is becoming more definitive?Scientist put it down to Apocalypse Fatigue. "The lesson of recent years would appear to be that apocalyptic threats — when their impacts are relatively far off in the future, difficult to imagine or visualize, and" [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: November 18, 2009, 4:43am EST

  • Economy to get worse with debt hitting $12 trillion

    While the global economy continues to improve, the situation in the United States is more grim where the going is slower than expected. The US economy is facing a long hard haul back with debt levels now topping $12 trillion. That only adds to pressure on the economy from weak [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: November 18, 2009, 2:59am EST

  • Cost cuts hit auditors

    The economic crisis is having an impact on financial statements and auditors with Britain's Financial Reporting Council (FRC), as reported here, warning that accounting firms could sacrifice audit quality when they're cutting costs and scrambling to get more cash in through the door.In fairness, the FRAC didn't find any evidence' [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: November 17, 2009, 6:01am EST

  • 49 million Americans go hungry

    US stocks might be rallying to a 13 month high and retail sales have bounced on the back of resurgent car sales but look behind the numbers and you will see the US is a long way off from recovery. According to a new report from the United States Department [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: November 17, 2009, 4:32am EST

  • New fair value rule to face test

    Corporate disclosures are about to get a lot longer and a lot more complicated. The International Accounting Standards Board has released its revised set of rules dealing with the classification and measurement of financial assets, such as loans, as well as debt and equity securities using fair value. Sox First [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: November 16, 2009, 5:43am EST

  • Christianity and the crash

    Did Christianity cause the market meltdown? Probably not completely but according to Hanna Rosin at The Atlantic, it fueled the housing bubble that created the crash.In her piece, Rosin talks about a different strain of Christian faith which has has grown in popularity, one that promises to make believers rich [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: November 16, 2009, 5:27am EST

  • Greenland melting fast

    In the lead up to Copenhagen, we have alarming news that Greenland's ice sheets are melting at an accelerating rate. According to the report, Greenland lost an estimated 1500 gigatons (one gigaton is equal to 1 billion tons) of ice from the year 2000 to 2008 and if it does' [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: November 15, 2009, 4:24am EST

  • Climate change and Big Brother

    The age of Big Brother is upon thanks to climate change. Yesterday, I did a blog entry looking at how the Dutch government plans to introduce a road tax to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Significantly, every car will be equipped with a GPS device to track the distance and how [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: November 15, 2009, 3:55am EST

  • Dutch road tax a sign of things to come

    A sign of what's ahead around the world with the Dutch government announcing that it plans to introduce a "green" road tax by the kilometre from 2012 to reduce carbon emissions by 10%. Each car will be equipped with a GPS device to track the distance and how much the' [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: November 14, 2009, 1:29am EST

  • The last tuna?

    The world is running out of tuna, the result of over fishing and illegal fishing. The International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) has been told that stocks of the giant bluefin tuna are close to collapse with catches in 2008 at three times the ICCAT limit. The [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: November 14, 2009, 12:47am EST

  • Taxpayers lose out on bank bailout

    Neil Barofsky, the special inspector general for the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), otherwise known as the bank bailout or banking welfare program, has conceded that the program will result in a loss to taxpayers to the tune of tens of billions of dollars.Barofsky said: "We need to" [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: November 13, 2009, 3:13am EST

  • Gold price rises as supply runs out

    The price of gold continues to rise, now hitting an all-time high of $1,123.38 an ounce. For good reason too. Investors now see it as an alternative to the slumping US dollar.But we can expect the gold price to just keep going up with reports that global gold production is [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: November 13, 2009, 2:55am EST

  • Glass-Steagall and the market meltdown

    It's the 10th anniversary of the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act. That's right, 10 years ago the Clinton administration abolished the Depression era legislation. Glass-Steagall was passed under the Roosevelt administration in 1933 to stop the Wall Street shenanigans that had ushered in the Great Depression where banks getting their [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: November 13, 2009, 2:20am EST

  • US unemployment to hit 13%

    We've been hearing lots of commentators say that US unemployment will peak at around 10% and that the recession is over. But former Merrill Lynch economist David Rosenberg says unemployment will hit 13%, the highest since monthly records began in 1948. According to this report, Rosenberg says the rising unemployment' [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: November 12, 2009, 4:16am EST

  • Is China about to collapse?

    Hedge fund manager James Chanos will go down in history as the first to predict that Enron was a disaster in the making. Chanos is in the business of scrutinizing companies for their flaws and then making a fortune by betting against them.Now, he is predicting that China is about [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: November 12, 2009, 3:54am EST

  • Suicides: the real cost of recessions

    More reports confirming the way the recession is destroying, quite literally, the lives of so many people with news that the rate of suicides is on the rise as people weight up the cost of the recession with soaring unemployment and home foreclosures. According to one psychology professor quoted in [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: November 11, 2009, 2:30am EST

  • Big Tobacco extends its reach

    Big tobacco has hit upon a brilliant strategy with reports that Reynolds American Inc, maker of Camel cigarettes, is planning to buy a company that's stopping people from smoking.The manufacturer of cancer sticks is apparently in talks to buy Swedish maker of nicotine gum Niconovum AB. Now what could that' [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: November 11, 2009, 1:52am EST

  • Murdoch threatens Google and BBC

    Rupert Murdoch's charge for online content strategy continues to get stranger and stranger. Now he has told Sky News that his company's online newspaper pages will be invisible to Google users when it launches its new paid content strategy. Asked by Sky News Australia's political editor David Speers why News' [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: November 10, 2009, 2:04am EST

  • Most Americans to depend on government for handouts

    To fix the unemployment problem, economist Paul Krugman suggests the US Government bring in a WPA (Works Progress Administration) -type program, the same sort of approach that was adopted in the New Deal. The problem with that, as Zubin Jelveh, says in the New Republic is that people taking up [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: November 10, 2009, 1:28am EST

  • Al Gore, climate change profits and civil disobedience

    Plenty has been written about Al Gore making mega profits out of global warming. As the New York Times reported last week, as a partner in Silicon Valley venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, he has cleaned up big time with its investments in smart electricity grids. That's' [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: November 09, 2009, 3:27am EST

  • Goldman Sachs: doing

    Hard to go past this interview with Goldman Sachs boss Lloyd Blankfein in The Times where he claims bankers are doing "God's work"."We’re very important," Blankfein says. "We help companies to grow by helping them to raise capital. Companies that grow create wealth. This, in turn, allows people to have" [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: November 09, 2009, 2:43am EST

  • Goldman Sachs and God

    Hard to go past this interview with Goldman Sachs boss Lloyd Blankfein in The Times where he claims bankers are doing "God's work"."We’re very important," Blankfein says. "We help companies to grow by helping them to raise capital. Companies that grow create wealth. This, in turn, allows people to have'" [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: November 09, 2009, 2:43am EST

  • Galleon scandal: just the beginning?

    The biggest prosecution of hedge fund insider trading went into overdrive this week with 20 people, including Galleon Group LLC co-founder Raj Rajaratnam, getting hauled up on criminal charges. Bloomberg has the rogue's gallery of all the names of the people behind the insider trading. We can expect a debate' [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: November 08, 2009, 4:09am EST

  • MBA turkeys and the market

    Earlier this year, I did a blog entry slating the business schools for helping create the market meltdown. The Women on the Web site followed up with a brilliant roll call of MBAs, or Masters of the Business Apocalypse, from Harvard. The rogue's gallery includes former Merrill Lynch CEO Stanley' [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: November 08, 2009, 1:22am EST

  • Why Facebook is for old farts: the demographics of social networking

    Earlier this year, we had the shocking news that the fastest growing group of Facebook users were the 55-plus age group. In a space of just six months, they had increased a whopping 513%. Time Magazine's Lev Grossman came up with reasons why Facebook was for old farts: Facebook is' [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: November 07, 2009, 12:54am EST

  • Unemployment and the failed stimulus

    Back in January, US unemployment was sitting at 7.2% and commentators were saying a stimulus package would fix everything. It hasn't. The latest appalling figures show that US unemployment has hit 10.2%, a 26-year high. Worse still, the total unemployment figure including people who have either been forced to work' [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: November 06, 2009, 4:53pm EST

  • The psychology of climate change

    Why is it that we struggle to get change their lifestyles to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. Maybe it has something to do with the psychology of climate change.New Scientist has some fascinating research showing that people really want to belong, they don't want to too different from the crowd' [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: November 06, 2009, 7:56am EST

  • Facebook and scammers

    Facebook has announced in its developer's blog that it is cracking down on scammers. It's not before time, given the publicity and uproar. We've had instances like phishing campaigns where users are robbed of their Facebook user names and passwords, we've had instances where users have been fooled into revealing [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: November 06, 2009, 7:46am EST

  • Obama dismantles post-Enron reforms

    Earlier this week, I did a blog entry on how White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel was pushing wants Democrats to let small public companies worth less than $75 million avoid complying with Sarbanes-Oxley.And now the House Financial Services Committee voted 37-32 to do just that. And it's a' [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: November 05, 2009, 6:04am EST

  • Big profits: How Goldman Sachs bet on the US housing crash

    Earlier this year, I did a blog entry on Matt Taibbi's piece in Rolling Stone on how Goldman Sachs had engineered market manipulation since the Great Depression. Now, McClatchy Newspapers investigative reporter Greg Gordon has a piece that really raises serious questions about the legality of Goldman Sachs actions by' [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: November 05, 2009, 5:27am EST

  • Buffett bets big on US recovery

    Warren Buffett has taken a giant wager on the US economy recovering with Berkshire Hathaway announcing it's buying the rest of Burlington Northern and Santa Fe, America's second biggest railroad, that he doesn't already own. As the New York Times says, the Sage of Omaha is betting that as the' [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: November 04, 2009, 4:08am EST

  • India goes for gold: dollar to lose out

    Extraordinary developments with India paying $6.7 billion for IMF gold, giving its bank the about the tenth largest gold holdings of all the central banks. At the moment, gold now makes up about 6% of India's foreign exchange reserves. You can bet that will grow substantially. The deal has sent' [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: November 04, 2009, 3:28am EST

  • Emanuel presses for another Sarbanes-Oxley exemption

    It looks like small public companies will get another stay of execution from forced compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley.Bloomberg reports that Obama's chief of staff Rahm Emanuel wants Democrats to spare, yet again, small public companies worth less than $75 million from complying with Sarbanes-Oxley. And you would have to say that' [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: November 03, 2009, 4:17am EST

  • US Chamber of Commerce exposed on Facebook

    Last month, I did a blog entry looking at how the US Chamber of Commerce was going into contortions over climate change. Its members were leaving, claiming the chamber had become irrelevant.Now the Chamber is discovering there is nowhere to hide. It's Facebook site is getting hammered by critics. For' [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: November 03, 2009, 3:28am EST

  • Bankers expect bonus pay records

    Some things never change. Around the world, politicians and voters are furious about the massive payouts and bonuses for bankers. But no matter what controls are put in by the G20 and governments, the gravy train continues with the latest Bloomberg poll finding that almost three in five traders, analysts [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: November 02, 2009, 5:24am EST

  • Waiting for the crash

    Just a few days ago was the 80th anniversary of the stock market crash. October 29, 1929, or "Black Tuesday" was the day that resulted in banks collapsing and the once-roaring US economy sinking into the Great Depression.As we think back to the worst stock market collapse ever, it might [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: November 02, 2009, 4:24am EST

  • Madoff calls SEC's Schapiro a "dear friend": jailhouse interview

    Even after he is locked up for the rest of what's left of his life, Bernard Madoff continues to rub salt in the wounds. According to a jailhouse interview, published in The Wall Street Journal, Madoff gets stuck into the SEC investigators and says he was amazed he wasn't caught. [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: November 01, 2009, 1:43am EST

  • Commercial real estate: an accounting shell game

    It wasn't that long ago that I was warning the commercial real estate market in the United States looked likely to trigger a new mortgage crisis with a soaring delinquency rate and building owners struggling to finance the massive loans they took out when the market was booming. What's even [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: November 01, 2009, 1:10am EST

  • Why the recession is good for the vitamins and fitness market

    [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: October 31, 2009, 1:42am EDT

  • Dad Joe says Michael Jackson is worth more dead than alive

    First we had reports from investigative blogger Gerald Posner reports that Michael Jackson's autopsy photos are being shopped around. If it's true, the pics would get a good price. According to this report, they could be worth $1 million. All this coincides with the release of the 90 minute Michael [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: October 31, 2009, 1:16am EDT
← Tick Marks Don't Mess With Taxes →

Blog Info:
Sox First

» http://www.soxfirst.com/

Categories

BNN Traffic Index

Alexa: 410,322
-27,779

Compete: No data
0

Quantcast: No data
230,056

BNN Traffic Index: -27,779

BNN Authority Index

Technorati: 0

Google: 2

BNN Authority Index: 1.0

» Subscribe to the Sox First feed